In this paper, we introduce 2 designs based on network coding (NC) for system-level throughput improvement in satellite systems. The first design is applied to the forward downlink of multibeam satellite systems using an adaptive physical layer. In this type of systems, user terminals (UTs) receiving a satellite channel happen to also be able to receive physical links transmitted towards other UTs in other geographical areas. Hence, if UTs were able to tune other physical channels, they could access and decode all such signals. Assuming such multilink reception, the overall system would have an enormous increase of useful throughput, and moreover, multiple paths would become available to every UT. NC can then be naturally used to optimally mix the traffic towards the users through such multiple physical paths. The proposed full design targets multicast applications and achieves throughput improvements of up to the 88% with regard to state-of-the-art schemes. The second design applies to systems where multiple sources transmitting to one or more satellites experience severe packet losses (eg, forward uplink through multiple gateways). Nowadays, system availability is achieved by transmitting the same packets in different spatial channels, ie, using spatial diversity. Using NC to encode the data across users, and introducing novel cognitive elements, the system outage probability can be reduced, thus increasing the throughput. The design is shown to achieve more than one order of magnitude system outage probability advantage for a sufficient number of UTs. Furthermore, a methodology determining the optimal number of transmitting UTs and code rate is derived. KEYWORDS dual satellite, multibeam, network coding, proportionally fair, satellite, spatial diversity
INTRODUCTIONThe last decade has witnessed a constant and increasing demand for the efficient distribution of personalized contents in Internet-based networks. 1The delivery of this type of contents is well known for being highly throughput-consuming. Some examples of common applications are HD broadcasting, interactive TV, audio and video streaming, online gaming, and file distribution and downloading. To satisfy such throughput demand, cellular networks moved from the 2G standard up to the current 4G, while already designing the upcoming 5G. The satellite industry, with the aim of competing with traditional cellular networks and offering Internet and broadband services, is designing and deploying a number of solutions.Multibeam satellite technology, ie, satellites boarding a number of high gain spot-beam antennas in the platform, each of them covering a small region of the globe, typically of the order of hundreds of kilometers, and thus providing high throughput, has enabled high throughput satellite (HTS) systems. High throughput satellite systems have recently started to be deployed by the satellite industry, 2,3 and the deployment of collocated HTS is foreseen in the future. 4,5 Such throughput increase allows to cope with the demand of the above-mentioned...